Frontier labs are buying into industries

Our read: the AI labs are buying their way into industries, but their revenue hasn't followed yet.

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have done 22 acquisitions and acqui-hires since 2023 (our count). That went from about one per half-year in 2023–24 to 11 in the first half of 2026.

Most are tools for the labs' own products: coding, evals, analytics. Only 6 of the 22 buy a workflow that customers in an industry use (our calc). All three bio deals came in 2026, the latest on Oct 20: OpenAI has acquired Orchestra Bio, software for running drug-development programs, folding the team into its Rosalind life-sciences unit. Terms weren't disclosed.

The revenue mix hasn't caught up:
- Anthropic's 2025 revenue was ~83% usage-based (our calc from prospectus figures reported by Reuters)
- The clearest new revenue line is ads: OpenAI's are approaching a $1B run rate, per CNBC, and they came from a launch, not a deal (our read)

Incumbents exposed if the labs do move in (exposure, not a call): $VEEV and $IQV in life sciences, $INTU in finance, $GTLB in coding, $CRM in enterprise agents.

What would prove us wrong

Set before publication. We report back in public when one trips.

• industry-workflow deals fall to 25% of lab deals or less over the next year (27% now), or Anthropic's next filing still shows usage at 80%+ of revenue with no industry product line broken out. Open · next check: Next lab filing / deal count

Method and sources

Figures marked "our calc" are our own arithmetic on the cited primary sources (company filings, earnings releases, public datasets). Every figure was checked against its source before publication.

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General research, the same for every reader. Not investment advice.